THE STRAWBERRY FIELDS OF HEAVEN

In a departure from her novels of contemporary growing pains, Elfman turns to 1870s history--the Utopian, ""Biblical communist"" settlement in Oneida, New York, led by John Humphrey Noyes--to explore the nature (imprisoning? freeing?) of sexual relationships. Peter Berger, successful N.Y. lawyer, son of a hellfire preacher, is competitive, aggressive, restless. His wife Katherine, abhoring their callous sex, has withdrawn into daydreams of a ""sexless soldier"": gentle, impotent, loving rather than possessive. Even their children--Paulie, Deirdre, and small Rebecca--are no longer a bond. Then Peter suddenly announces that they'll quit the city to join Noyes' ""Perfectionists"" in Oneida--where, he secretly believes, the free-love ""complex marriages"" will loose him for the sexual satisfaction he can't find with Katherine or prostitutes. And, though initially horrified, Katherine is drawn to the idea of the settlement: Sarah, a Perfectionist of long standing, promises her freedom from sex if she wishes, an opportunity to pursue her painting (which Peter patronizes as her ""little pictures""), the ""shelter"" of women with blessedly short hair and sensible uncorseted clothes. Peter's first communal leap is disillusioning, however: the woman chosen for him is a fat matronly being--and he has a difficult but liberating lesson in ""giving up the egocentric core of his nature."" Meanwhile, Katherine finds her ""sexless soldier"" in gardener Martin, who actually becomes a full-scale, ideal lover. The children also undergo changes: Paulie, former student at a military school, learns the truth about war; poor Rebecca is brainwashed until she agrees to burn her beloved doll; teen-age Deirdre, in order to sleep with Sarah's son Adam, offers to take the prerequisite course--sex with one of the older men--which handily destroys romance forever. And finally the Bergers return to New York--humbled, shriven, not yet loving (Katherine grieves at giving up Martin). . . until they soften their egos, abandon double-standards, raise their consciousness, and succeed with their ""hard-wrought"" marriage. Period fiction that's riddled with 20th century attitudes (and anachronistic talk)--but the Oneida scene is imaginatively evoked, and Elfman drives her sex/marriage homilies home with chatty, airy earnestness.